


you, only you, will have stars who can laugh

by 500shadesofblue



Series: Echoing [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae AU, Fae Magic, Fae are tricky and manipulative and they will take advantage, Gen, Multi, Power Imbalance, Purple Prose, This is Not The Fluff You're Looking For, have some lovely and evocative nonsense, i'm tagging for non con because this is definitely dubious and it has strongly dubious undertones, made up magic terminology, nothing explicit but it don't gotta be explicit to be dubious, these are messed up and self-indulgent things that we write, these dynamics don't reflect what's going on in echoes, to be fair the entire fae are probably the definition of dubious undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/500shadesofblue/pseuds/500shadesofblue
Summary: One is golden as sunlight, tawny skin and hair like spun cornsilk falling in curls around his face, wearing a starbursting scar in the shape of a fallen autumn leaf over his left eye. His eyes are the blue of forget-me-nots; subdued, tinged with periwinkle, and softly lustrous.His eyelashes are gold. She likes him.The other is dark as the first is fair. Curling waves, much like those of his kin, frame his face; however, his are blacker than the night sky, wild and shining with an iridescent sheen like an oil slick. His skin is lovely, cinnamon brown freckles strewn all over like constellations, and even his frowning mouth can’t take away from the whole pretty picture of him.She likes him, too.





	1. delphinium

**Author's Note:**

> _Eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart._

She wanders off, one day. She finds the boy in the forest with a laugh like the cries of gulls and hair like crow feathers.

(Or maybe he finds her.)

Her mother looks, but she doesn’t come back.

* * *

She learns the boy’s name is _Luffy._

What an odd name.

She’s only eight, tells him honestly, straightforwardly blunt in the way children are. He only laughs, delighted, like she’s speaking truths he’s never heard.

Luffy is talkative and _bright,_ almost blinding to look at, his grin so wide and eyes dancing so merrily that she’s drawn, wide-eyed, into his thrall.

He takes her hand and she lets him, clasps his hand tight as he leads her deeper.

* * *

Luffy speaks to the deer, the birds, to creatures odder and larger than she perhaps thinks should be in the forest. She mentions this to him.

“They won’t show themselves to just anyone,” he tells her, eyes twinkling, still clasping her hand. “You and me are special.”

Special.

Wonder in her eyes, she nods. She thinks she’d quite like to be that.

* * *

She loves her mother, but she never goes home.


	2. carnation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..._

(UNTOLD YEARS LATER:)

 

“There’s someone in our forest,” Valentine says aloud, astounded.

The herd of deer around her stills, pauses in their grazing. A number of them raise their heads and look to the west, eyes dark and shiny like river stones, hides brown as the soil and bellies purest white. A few still have fawnspots dappling their flanks, not yet past the cusp of maturity.

Her voice reflects none of her startled bewilderment, even as still water, the glassy surface of a pond. Still, she thinks, Luffy would be able to read her face with ease.

If he wasn’t halfway across the forest, that is.

He can hear her regardless. Plus, it isn’t as if he can’t sense them himself.

Fae presence, burning bright like stars. Of the Summer Court, perhaps. One? No, two. Similar, even if they differ in caliber. Kin shaped.

Between one heartbeat and the next, she takes off into a fleet footed run.

 

 

Left behind, the meadow of deer return to their grazing.

* * *

Luffy has, of course, already found them.

Her expression stays even with the ease of long practice as she blurs into place beside him, plucks at the back of Luffy’s open, sleeveless tunic (little better than a layer between the sun and his back, it is) without any hope of stemming his relentless chatter, resting a reassuring (possessive) hand at the sun-warmed small of his back.

He hasn’t yet ruined or forgotten the shirt she made him, woven and sang into shape from the petals of wild roses, and she likes the subtle, milkskin layer of her magic on him. That shows their kinship, if the hand she has on him doesn’t speak its truth a thousand times louder.

The two fae in front of them - an appropriate distance away, even Luffy doesn’t discard the Rules, except when it fits him - are, as fae are, absurdly beautiful.

One is golden as sunlight, tawny skin and hair like spun cornsilk falling in curls around his face, wearing a starbursting scar in the shape of a fallen autumn leaf over his left eye. His eyes are the blue of forget-me-nots; subdued, tinged with periwinkle, and softly lustrous.

His eyelashes are gold. She likes him.

The other is dark as the first is fair. Curling waves, much like those of his kin, frame his face; however, his are blacker than the night sky, wild and shining with an iridescent sheen like an oil slick. His skin is lovely, cinnamon brown freckles strewn all over like constellations, and even his frowning mouth can’t take away from the whole pretty picture of him.

She likes him, too.

“So, do you wanna be friends?” Luffy’s opening offer finally ends, and his grin stretches wider, cheshire and curling, as he rolls his weight back onto his heels and peers over at them eagerly. His deerheart eyes are shadowed beneath the brim of his strawhat.

They won’t take the deal, of course (she doesn’t think there’s fae stupid enough to do so that could make it here), but she blinks placidly at them, curious.

“We have come from the Autumn Court and the Summer Court both,” says the fair one with no little gravitas, ignoring - as is reasonable - Luffy’s offer. “We are representatives, come to meet with the Spring Court.”

Luffy laughs, bright and merry, but there’s a crueler edge to it, one that can live under his words when it suits him. Valentine simply looks on at the pair of them, breathing evenly, anticipation rising gentle in her breast.

“We _are_ the Spring Court,” Luffy laughs, and her keen eyes catch the utterly unsubtle sight of the dark one’s face falling.

* * *

They take them deeper.

The dark one is still silent, fire tightly leashed and smoldering. The fair one seems to be the Speaker - sensically, she thinks, considering his tighter leash on his aura - and he’s currently listening to Luffy speak in circles as they run, approaching the next layer of the forest.

Luffy’s stream of words doesn’t falter or stem as they pass through the first barrier, like plunging through the veil of a spider’s web. Neither of their guests falter, either, but she feels them flicker in surprise as they discard the Compulsion as easily as a horse hide shuddering to banish the nagging sting of a fly.

Valentine stays silent and amused as they go deeper, deeper, ever deeper, each subsequent layer taking a greater and greater toll on their guests. As they get closer, wandering in labyrinthine, winding circles, the weight of Spring sweetens the air, syrupy and golden like honey, weaving into Luffy’s voice until the two are one and the same. The two bees don’t even notice, lulled and distracted, bright but so very foolish. Until, finally-

The fair one falls, and Luffy catches him, swift and strong. Luffy’s grin hasn’t faded since the beginning, and the magic is so thick in the air Valentine can taste it, tinting the world gold and green.

The dark one stumbles, gasps out a ragged breath, reaching a hand out to his kin. “Sab-!”

And then he, too, falls.

Valentine blurs to catch him, deft hands touching his bare aura with the stunning intimacy of flesh on flesh. His dark eyes flick to her impassive ones - stunned, angry, and colored with just a tinge of dawning fear - before they roll back in his head and she takes the full burden of his weight as he collapses like a puppet with strings cut, her hands clasping tight around his bare shoulders and warm back, his face tucking into her neck.

“I’m astounded that worked,” Valentine says, after a measure of pleased silence, speaking into the quiet (excepting the faint and ever-present birdsong). Luffy’s grin has melted into something less sharp, more anticipatory, and he looks at the autumn fae in his arms curiously, keen-eyed like he wants to take him apart.

“I didn’t think they were gonna be that dumb,” Luffy admits, brief fascination guttering like a candle, hauling the fair one over his shoulder, not using a lick of magic to do so.

“They’re young,” Valentine says, pulsing her aura, singing out into the forest, calling for a creature.

Many sing back in response, and she focuses on the one nearest, plucking at the spark of its presence with the clear, pure note of a single harp string, singled out with intent, skill. The auras of their two guests shudder in response, flickering with the power of her call, and she huffs out a breath through her nose. “Whoops,” she says, blandly, but neither wake.

The fire of the summer fae in her arms trembles, flickers, but his corporeal form is caught and bound by spring magic as surely as a fly in a web. He does not stir.

Luffy does not reprimand her because he has done far more foolish things; and anyways, he is not one for reprimands.

Neither of them shift - though Valentine smiles softly in greeting - as the tiger fades its way through the trees, larger than a sapling of five years and butting its head against her affectionately, huffing its hellos.

“Hello,” Valentine murmurs in return, speaking it’s true name in a chiming, fierce chord. The tiger exhales a purr, lids half-closing, before its belly lowers to the ground in preparation of taking the darker one’s weight.

Valentine hauls the fae composed of fire and starlight into her arms with ease, vaulting onto the tiger’s striped back. She lets the lolling head of the stranger pillow against her breast as she cradles his torso, keeping him steady as the tiger starts to fade again.

“Towards the Heart,” Luffy says, as if she doesn’t already know.

* * *

The dark fae is Summer and the fair fae is Autumn, but the magic layering them is not so simple.

She can feel the telltale touch of Shiro - Winter - on summer and starlight, even as he so clearly has fire fueling his every breath. Which is odd, certainly. Aka is not one to lend things out. Not without a heavy price, that is.

(She does not think of Luffy’s hat.)

Meanwhile, autumn and sunlight - aura muffled by the weight of Spring, and Luffy’s powerful, familiar aura, besides - is the crisp, crackling presence of Autumn, but rather than the cloying magic’s of the celestial council gumming him up, he has the touch of Dragon tapping into the root of his magics.

Odd.

“Your sire’s faction reaches even here,” Valentine remarks, offhand.

“Autumn is powerful and divided.” Luffy doesn’t miss a beat, lazy observation cutting to the marrow. “My sire has surely snared a lovely rabbit for his trap, though. He’s a pretty one.” Luffy slips back into informal, childish speech, easy as plucking a petal from a flower. Valentine lets her lips curve into a faint smile.

“I am glad to have them here,” she says. She doesn’t clutch summer starlight closer, but her grip on him doesn’t loosen, either; compromise. “Let’s try to keep them for a while, shall we?”

Luffy’s delighted laughter, even from the back of her tiger, holds promise.

* * *

The two guests, of course, are nothing before the Heart.

The dark one wakes just in time for struggles to be utterly futile, but he tries to wake his kin with a bleary shout, writhing in his bonds. The vines twining round his wrists and legs and throat, curling over his bare chest - a mixture of her and Luffy both - simply bloom in response, crimson spider lilies and snow-white daisies brushing petals against his bleeding skin, furrows torn by thorns.

She and Luffy let him yell, listen keenly as his shouts trail into choked screams and sobs. Luffy laughs, enthralled, but Valentine simply watches.

* * *

By the end, their guests are no longer guests. They are successfully Tethered.

She tugs on the invisible, twining rope tethering her aura to starlight’s - no, she knows his Name, now, _Ace -_ and even unconscious, he shudders, and she watches fascinated as a flush steals over his freckled cheeks, painting him carnation pink.

She plucks the same at the string connecting her to tawny gold, eyes trained on his reaction. Like most fae, Valentine loves beautiful things, loves it too when they break (though perhaps not as much as Luffy), and she so enjoys seeing power so bright brought to heel.

The autumn fae twitches, face scrunching - _expressive,_ she notices, pleased, knows she’ll have to be clever to bring the same reaction out of him while conscious - and her eyes rove lazy, sated, over his face, his mouth, his cornsilk hair.

She can feel Luffy playing with the Tethers in his own way - ever-playful, a tad sharp, curious - and hopes that these ones last long. They haven’t had Tethered to play with for at least a century, and these two - _Ace,_ she tries in her head, roaring fire and the soft caress of salt under the syllables, loving the taste of it, and _Sabo,_ velvety soft like worn cured leather and sparks of lightning like storms _-_ are so lovely, a contrasting pair, and she can feel the complex magic and _bonds_ between them. More interesting than even the convoluted magic, to be sure, for two kin to come from different courts, magic gnarled like tangled roots and touched by Aka, Shiro, Dragon.

They are hers and Luffy’s, now.


	3. rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..._

Ace wakes with head a hazed, syrupy mess.

What is-

He remembers the screaming.

_Him_ screaming. Sabo asleep, still, and he can’t tell if he envies his blood brother or pities him, sleeping through- sleeping through-

Ace grasps, frantic, for his haki, and it comes easy, as it has for decades now, burning and crackling at his fingertips-

He inhales sharply, not quite a gasp, a slip of composure.

The Tether.

He _feels_ it. It almost entirely subsumes him, strangling, clinging vines writ from pure Spring, trailing from him and leading to two. Those- _those-_

He knows not their names.

All he knows is that the tether cages him, yokes him like a beast and leaves him entirely at their mercy. He can feel them, infinitely more powerful than their presences first suggested, and of _course_ they were masking their haki, stupid stupid _stupid_ Ace-

His tether is yanked.

He jolts upright, the velvety blanket of moss falling from him and disintegrating into dust and loam as he straightens.

_Come to me._ The compulsion comes, stronger than his breath, stronger than even his faith to remain by his brother ‘til he wakes. Helpless, hapless, Ace answers the call.

* * *

He appears before her in a burst of fire.

It licks off his limbs, orange and gold, but the springy green moss beneath his bare feet, the wildflowers and the insects, remain untouched by the hungry heat. As She and He will it, he is unable to bring deliberate harm to this forest.

Her eyes, lovely and dark and ringed with silver like moons, drink him in, and though she’s looking up at him - she’s sitting with legs tucked under herself like the forelegs of a deer, bare calves in the sweet clover - she is so undeniably Greater. He flushes (dammit dammit dammit) as her eyes trace over his bare belly, his arms, his (beautiful) hair, and _fuck,_ her thoughts are leaking into his brain. He _hates_ it, make it _stop-_

Abruptly, it does.

She is simply looking at him, gaze unfathomable, before she returns to her work.

Ace responds to her nonverbal command without thinking - _sit -_ as he sinks to the clover, mind spinning.

She continues her weaving, her song, melodious as a brook, as a bird, as the sun and moon and stars all together. She lulls him to sleep and asleep he remains, closed eyes upturned towards the sky until the stars rise and the beads she weaves are inundated with her magic, fully and utterly complete.

She does not place them around his neck. She puts them in his hands, instead, biding her time.

He will put them around his neck himself.

* * *

_"What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince._

_“You must be very patient,” replied the fox._

_"First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass._

_I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing._

_Words are the source of misunderstandings._

_But you will sit a little closer to me, every day...”_

* * *

Sabo wakes to a throbbing headache.

_What,_ he thinks, and then he feels the tug.

_Come,_ says an ageless, childish voice, colored greener than apples, tart and sweet and crisp. _Come._

For the span of a heartbeat, Sabo doesn’t move.

_COME!_

Sabo is up and moving in a sprint before the pass of another heartbeat. The command thunders in his ears like a rainstorm, no spring shower, and it curls around his brain as vines, thorny and flowering urgent and orange.

If Sabo could think, he’d likely be shedding tears. As-is, his only focus is fulfilling His command. _Come._

* * *

The forest blurs around him until he enters a pocket of endless night.

The canopy above his head weaves together in complex, dizzying patterns, branches entwined and coated with rich leaves like fur; below, the moss is green and soft, the blue glow of night-blooming flowers and lacy mushrooms strewn around the clearing and lighting the dark like stars. Fireflies drift, blinking on and off, patterns tapping out something he can’t quite grasp. Their bulbs glow soft, muted yellow, then cyan, then green, then gold again.

The One who tethers him - He, spring and chaos, not Her, stillwater and song - is farspeaking.

Sabo cannot hear him over the buzz of night insects, winding insidious and entirely deliberate into his brain, no matter how natural it might seem. His tether’s mouth is moving, but it’s blurred, indistinct, and Sabo cannot read his lips; nor can he see the figure on the surface of the still, glassy pond, illuminated by bioluminescent aqua light and reflecting the dark tangle of branches overhead.

Even as Sabo observes - mind dizzy, clamping down and trying fruitlessly to buck the reality of new Truths - the glamour slicks away from his Tether’s face like new sap, a single swipe sweeping the farspeech from the pond.

“Good news!” his tether chirps, addressing him directly, and Sabo feels every inch the fool at the sheer breadth of his aura; vast as a whole Season, vibrant and fettle with leashed power. “Shanks said he doesn’t mind if we keep you guys. Yay!”

Sabo’s heart sinks, so like a stone, as it falls down, down, down to his feet.

* * *

_“I am looking for friends. What does that mean - tame?"_

_"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."_

* * *

Ace wakes with hands stroking through his hair.

He makes an indiatinct mixed noise of pleasure and outrage - seven _hells_ that feels good, but who _dares_ touch him - before he realizes exactly whose hands are weaving into his hair, scratching along his scalp in riotous sensation, soothing the aches even he knew not of.

He makes another pleasured, groaning, helpless noise, mouth working slackly and wordlessly against bare skin - Her lap, Her thigh? - as skilled fingers stroke along his body, his nerves and his aura both, singing comfort and belonging into his bones.

_Fuck, stop. Stop!_

The hands still and Ace dryly sobs, hands clenching around fabric and moss- oh.

One of his hands is wrapped wholly around a slender ankle, the fine bones of it sheer under his hand. If he could, he’d squeeze down and shatter them in an instant, but he cannot.

His other hand clutches at her hip, the petal-soft garment draping over it, even as his face is pressed unseeing into her lap (his mouth _is_ against her thigh) and helpless rage begins to brew within him like a storm.

“Don’t be upset,” She says, the first time he’s heard her voice, and he’s struck breathless at the melody of it, lilting and precious like a dove. “You crawled over to me yourself and pressed your head under my hands.”

Ace feels himself flush with shame and is horribly glad that she cannot see his face, even as he knows she feels his haki, all the truths within it. He almost follows her fingers as they leave him, but keeps himself still with his ironclad will - where was that will, he thinks, when he was unconscious, begging for her touch like a dog? - and jerks away from her as he rears back, clumsy, falling to the clover below, splayed on his back.

He feels as the clover cradles him, vibrant and green, the hum of her magic keeping it soft and welcoming. It skitters over his skin like a caress and he hates it, hates that he _doesn’t_ hate it, hates that already her magic is woven shallowly into him and its touch is a comfort. In such a short amount of time. What will happen if he cannot leave? What will he become in the span of one short year, trapped in this pleasurable haze, doomed to an eternity in Spring?

He’d almost rather die.

“No need to be so dramatic,” she says, dryly amused, the sound like bells. “I can hear your aura from here.”

“You can feel it,” Ace rasps darkly, leaning up because he cannot bear looking up at her face for another second, needs to regain some height, firm ground. Her eyes do not leave his as he gracefully leans upward, straightens as if pulled by a string.

“I can,” she says. “But I’m not listening very hard. You’re so expressive that I don’t have the need.”

Ace flushes again at that.

“Then again,” she muses, “you’ve already taken so well to this. Your aura keeps reaching out to mine, did you know? It’s trying to climb the tether.”

Ace jerks his haki back in horror, but she’s not at all wrong. His haki _is_ reaching for hers, yearning, craving her comforting and pleasurable touch like a heliotrope towards the sun.

It’s been so long since he’s been touched.

“Stop that,” he hisses, tearing at the clover. His Intent is not to hurt, utterly ignorant of his hands, so it tears under his fingers, sighs its verdant death across the clearing. Her eyes do not flicker downward, but she feels it.

“I’m not doing anything,” she says. The Truth of it sits in his bones worse than anything she could have uttered, striking him like a physical blow.

“This is what it feels like when I reach to you,” she says, and he is subsumed.

Sheer pleasure strikes him, purer and sweeter than nectar, blooming beads of honeysuckle and the downy feathers of a bird. He shudders wordlessly as her aura plucks a single note in his, a heartstring, trembling with the breadth of it.

And then she’s gone and he’s empty.

He gasps for breath, heaving, feeling sweat slick his brow. She does not laugh. She looks upon him keener, attention more focused than before, and more frightening than even that is the patience in her gaze. She will wait until he surrenders to her.

“You will beg me for that,” she says, and it’s terrible, but he knows she’s not wrong.

* * *

_“People have forgotten this truth-"_

* * *

Sabo tenses, almost imperceptibly, as he feels his brother’s soul singing out through the spring.

Entirely apart from the tethers that bind them now, he can feel Ace, has been able to feel him since before they were children. _Reluctancy,_ he feels, a constrained blaze, and then _pleasure,_ dizzying as a wildfire and roaring ten times as loud, the stroking strum of being played like a harp-

Sabo’s tether grabs him by the wrist and yanks him out of the way of a collision with a massive oak.

“Pay attention,” his tether says, the double meaning entirely deliberate, and Sabo is helpless to refuse.

Half his mind is utterly present in the run - just behind his tether, fleeter footed than even himself, breathlessly singing with power - and the rest is watching, sickeningly enthralled, at the pulses of Ace’s haki. Ace is being _touched,_ a pleasure that Sabo himself craves, cannot give. Autumn is so cold, but Ace, even being composed of Summer, burns hotter and lonelier, chilled by the aura of Shiro’s winter and almost fifty years spent under his command. But they are in Spring, now, and Sabo can feel the buzzing warmth of it, the flood, the honey, and perhaps worst of all, Her song-

“She’s so good at this,” his tether remarks, amused, voice low and snapping Sabo back further into the present. Ace’s haki still burns at the back of his mind, muted. “Are you looking forward to your own turn?”

Sabo cannot summon a single word to say in return.

* * *

_“People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn’t forget it._

_You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed._

_You’re responsible for your rose.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The embedded quotes, the title, and the beginning notes are all taken from _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I'm sure he'd be appalled at the purposes to which I'm using and distorting his beautiful words... still, we're helpless before whims of the heart. If you haven't read _The Little Prince,_ you absolutely should, by the way. It's a lovely book, and quite short, too.
> 
> Anyways, this was just for fun! Dynamics are gnarled and twisted as the roots of the Fae that they come from. Goodness gracious, this one is a bit dark, please don't think this is anywhere near where I'm taking Echoes. _That_ story is the one I give my heart and soul to! This is a bit of dark whimsical nonsense off to the side.
> 
> I had this one sitting in my drafts a while, so deciding to dust it off and polish it up for posting wasn't too difficult... I'm working on the next chapter of Echoes! It's almost done! It's just all that formatting...! The formatting is what kills me, every time. I'm sure a comparatively small bit of readers will see this, so I can confidently spoil the fact that the next chapter will be a fun one. The serious stuff and the plot and the grit comes after that.
> 
> Anyways, thank you all so much for reading! If you've made it past a couple thousand words of purple prose and power imbalance, you have both my kudos and my condolences.
> 
> Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your continued readership. New or old, I love you all. :)
> 
>  
> 
> _So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-_
> 
> _"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."_
> 
> _"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."_
> 
> _"Yes, that is so," said the fox._
> 
> _"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince._
> 
> _"Yes, that is so," said the fox._
> 
> _"Then it has done you no good at all!"_
> 
> _"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields.”_


End file.
